


the forest has teeth

by peachperson



Category: Bravely Default: Flying Fairy
Genre: Backstory, Dark, Gen, POV Second Person, slow descent into insanity by bone marrow extract from giant snakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2802077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachperson/pseuds/peachperson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you were so obsessed with being the huntress, you never stopped to think you were the prey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the forest has teeth

**Author's Note:**

> just a fic with my second favourite charcter. as always, constructive criticism is appreciated.

You have been hunting for as long as you can remember. It was your mother who first took you out into the forest, where the only sound was the faint call of chickadees and your boots crunching in the snow. It was your mother who taught you to be still, Artemia, and listen. Use all of your senses when you hunt.

You were four and your arms shook whenever you held up the bow, forget loading it. But even when you were that young you loved the bow made of bones from beasts.

So it was only fair that when mother and father died, you inherited it.

At six many, including your sisters, would still consider you too young too hold a bow. You felt the same, at first; your hands shook with the weight of it and your arrows could only hit at point-blank range. But it wasn't like earlier when you pouted and handed the bow back to mother; back home you had no money, no food, and no way to the city from your little house in the Eternian valleys. So you bit your lip and crouched in the bushes, hoping that you could hit a rabbit for dinner.

And you learned, eventually. You learned to stand still and to move quiet you could hit your prey from a short ways away, and soon you could hold up your bow without your arms shaking. You scraped by in the winter after your parents died, and when spring came and the snow half-melted, your sisters and you made the long trek down the mountain to the city, and because the meat you hunted yourself sold so well, Einheria never had to sell a single belonging of your parents. And when Einheria and Mephilia were old enough to join the Forces, you had enough money and food and that dark period in your life was gone. You were okay.

You trusted your sisters to keep you okay, too. And you never doubted it.

Maybe you doubted it once. When you were staring out the window, waiting for them after a week. You doubted it. Maybe that was why you left the house without your bow or your knife, determined to get to the city through the thick blizzard, where maybe you could find shelter. But you didn't know the path; Einheria did. And you got lost, stumbling through the forest calling for--help? A beast to end your life quickly? You forgot.

You had slammed into the tree and fallen, and this time you didn't get up. You were cold and hungry and crying, because you were thirteen and you were sure your sisters had abandoned you, left you to die in the forest forgotten and alone.

You heard a soft chirp, and felt something nuzzling the back of your head.

You don't remember much of that year. The memories that stuck were small things; the pack of frostis casting reflect on you, to reflect the blowing snow. Thinking of your sisters and home and scoffing, because you were a beast now and you didn't need them. And falling behind the pack one day, and wandering and thinking that it was happening again, you were being abandoned. Again.

The days after that were a blur. You remember the Templar, of course, and the food, and arguing. And your sisters. How they embraced you, only for you to snarl and wriggle away because you had never been touched in a year and you hated it.

You got better at tolerating it. Tolerating hugs and haircuts and long, boring lessons on proper grammar and not growling when someone made you angry, but you never took them to heart.

And after all that, you hunted again. That year of being in the wild had taught you your purpose. You were Artemia Venus, and your purpose was to hunt.

***

You hated Florem. You hated the Orochi. You hated the disgusting ooze that came from their bones and you hated how the forest smelled of it. You hated hunting them too; they were big and their scales let not one single arrow pass through, so you had to shoot them in the eyes.

You hated the red man too. You hated the way sister obeyed every stupid smug word that came out of his stupid smug mouth. And you didn't care about his stupid orders but sister made you obey, and if sister wasn't there then he dropped his stupid smug smile and _snapped_ at you and pointed his sword. You had a small scar on your chest from where he poked you once.

But after a while you stopped hating.

You hunted. Much more than you usually did but you didn't care. It got harder to hunt because you could barely find any beasts. You didn't care. You hunted the Orochi instead. You got bit and bruised and cut but you didn't care. You hung their bones from the trees and didn't care about the ooze that dripped on your hands and your face. The forest stunk of death and decay but you didn't care.

You stopped thinking about home and your sisters and your friends and everything else you don't have time you are the huntress and you have prey to track until one day _you_ are being hunted and just as Edea runs her katana through your chest you _realize_ \--

you are the prey and then there is nothing


End file.
